


your voice is pomegranate wine

by lotesse



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Character of Color, M/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-29
Updated: 2009-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel's voice winds around them like an opiate, sweet and lulling and filled with secret promise, and Teal'c draws in a long breath to catch the strange words in his body. The poetry of his own youth beats through him like a drum, and he desires.</p><p>Set in early Season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your voice is pomegranate wine

Scarcely more than a boy, the scholar remains marked by the Abydonian sun, though that must soon change now that they spend their hours trapped beneath great distances of stone, buried under a mountain. Daniel does not yet seem fully comfortable in the garb of the Tau'ri, and Teal'c keeps expecting him to be accompanied by the billow of robes that Daniel no longer wears.

But though Daniel now dresses like the rest of the Stargate Command, he does not entirely look like them. The boy is lovely, unpracticed, unaware. His eyes are hidden, but when revealed they are the hottest part of a flame. His sun-bright hair falls loosely about his face. It is both distinctive and beautiful, all the more so because Daniel is so clearly unaware of his own seductive dishevelment. But when Daniel Jackson looks sideways at Teal'c from behind the curtain of his hair, through long dark lashes, Teal'c feels that he might drown.

Teal'c misses Drey'auc, of course, just as he knows she must miss him, but the emotion felt by this young scholar is something completely different. Teal'c is a soldier, and Drey'auc is a soldier's wife, but Daniel Jackson's heart bleeds red at the loss of his Sha're. Teal's could see it bleeding even in the halls of Apophis, hear the desperation in the young man's voice as he called out for death.

_To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me: I draw life from hearing it._

Teal's cannot forget, not for a moment, that it was by his hand that she was chosen to be the beloved of the god - to be the host of Amaunet. The bright blood of the boy-scholar's heart paints his hands, and always will. But Daniel Jackson does not seem to see things in that light. He comes to Teal'c at odd hours of the day and night, asking questions.

"Teal'c," Daniel says, holding the taste of the word on his full lips. "What does it mean?"

He does not understand the question, and raises an eyebrow in general query.

"Your name, I meant," Daniel explains. "Does it carry any sort of significance, in your language? In Goa'uld?"

His voice is gentle, tentative, halting, and Teal'c suspects that he thinks a great deal more than he says. He wishes to know all of the young man's thoughts, to savor every leap of his insight.

"I do not know of any such meaning," he says at last.

Daniel dips his head, hair briefly sliding back to expose his neck. "I'm still trying to expand my understanding of the language," he says. "Sha're taught me so much - everything, in fact - but there are so many things they don't have on Abydos, vocabulary her people never developed. And of course those are the words that I need most to understand the Goa'uld, to get her back."

He smiles, a half-smile, tainted with sorrow. "It's fitting that she taught me - her own name means 'consultation,' or 'talking together,' in her language. Though maybe I oughtn't to trust too much to names, considering the fact that my own translates roughly to 'judged by god.' I don't think I want any gods judging me at the moment."

"Sha're is your sim'ka, your betrothed," Teal'c says, not in question.

"My wife, actually," Daniel says abstractly. "My kalach, my cal'mah."

"Soul and sanctuary," he translates. "You speak the language well."

"Yeah, well, that's what I do." Daniel's generous mouth twists in grief, and the blood rushes to his lip where his teeth bite down into the sensitive flesh.

_It pains my heart to think of him, I am possessed by love of him._

Daniel Jackson leaves, then, and Teal'c hopes that he goes to rest. The young man is ridden by sorrow, and Teal'c would not see his flame-heart dimmed.

Teal'c marvels that such a man as Daniel would be allowed to accompany a team of warriors such as SG-1. His mind is a jewel beyond price; the loss of such knowledge and understanding in something so primitive as war would be a grave wrong. Few on Chulak could read and write. Even fewer could understand the anciet variants of their language contained in the artifacts of their divine masters. The dexterity of Daniel Jackson's tongue was a new wonder to him - the way that the scholar felt his way along spoken sounds and written characters as carefully as a man walking through the dark, as gently as a lover exploring the body of a beloved one.

He is so young, face clean of age's marks, and his voice is boyish and sweet still. So young to know so much. So young to carry such sorrow. Teal'c has lived nearly thrice Daniel Jackson's lifetime, and he does not yet know all that he knows.

For Daniel does more than speak strange words. He is curious about everything, frequently without reason that Teal'c can discern. Teal'c tells him old stories, recites for him children's rhymes, the love songs of Chulak, and Daniel listens with open eyes that see far-off visions, that watch the patterns of cultural information colliding, dancing.

Teal'c is stabbed by a fierce jealousy of Sha're, a fiercer hatred of Apophis, when he watches Daniel Jackson learning.

_Love of him captures the heart of all who tread the path; splendid youth who has no peer._

"Tell me of the love-words of your people," Teal'c asks Daniel one afternoon, in the candlelit darkness of the mountain.

"Of my people? Um, let me see - well, there's Shakespeare, I suppose, that's pretty much the gold standard of Earth love poetry, but I've always preferred the Song of Solomon myself: 'let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves."

Daniel's voice winds around them like an opiate, sweet and lulling and filled with secret promise, and Teal'c draws in a long breath to catch the strange words in his body. The poetry of his own youth beats through him like a drum, and he desires.

"I used to speak that verse to Sha're," Daniel murmurs, dirgelike, and Teal'c's heart clenches into a stone within his breast for pity of him, and the need to end his pain, rage at those who inflicted it and hatred for his own deep complicity.

When next they step through the Stargate, he carries his resolution before him like a torch, and the fuel which it burns is love.

_Could I see you with every glance, it would be better for me than to eat or to drink._


End file.
